Monica was in the living room, working the Times crossword puzzle. She looked up as Delaney came in, peering at him over the top of her Ben Franklin glasses.

"How did it go?" she asked.

"I need something," he said. "Maybe a tall scotch with a lot of ice and a lot of soda."

He mixed the drinks in the kitchen and brought them back to the living room. Monica held her glass up to the light.

"You have a heavy hand with that scotch bottle, kiddo," she said. She tried a sip. "But I forgive you. Now tell me how did it go?"

Delaney slumped in his high wing chair covered with bottle-green leather worn glassy smooth. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned his collar, and sighed.

"It went all right. She gave us a list of six possibles."

"Then what are you so grumpy about?"

"Who says I'm grumpy?"

"I do. You've got that squinchy look around the eyes, and you're gritting your teeth."

"I am? Well, it's not going to work."

"What's not going to work?"

"The investigation. My investigation. Now we've got six people to check out, and I have only Boone and Jason. I can't do any legwork myself without a tin to flash. So, in effect, there are two men to investigate six suspects. Oh, it could be done if we had all the time in the world, but Thorsen wants this thing cleared up by the end of the year."

"Only one answer to that, isn't there? Ask Ivar for more help."

"I don't know how Chief Suarez would take that. He said he'd cooperate in any way he could, but I have a hunch he still sees me as competition."

"Then instead of asking Ivar for more men, ask Suarez.

That makes him part of the team, doesn't it? Gives him a chance to share the success if you find out who killed Simon Ellerbee."

He stared at her reflectively. "I knew I married a great beauty," he said.

"Now I realize I also married a great brain."

She sniffed. "You're just finding that out? Why don't you call Suarez right now."

"Too late," Delaney said. "I'll wake up that family of his.

I'll get hold of him first thing in the morning. Meanwhile I've got a little work to do. Don't wait up for me; go to bed whenever you like."

He rose, lumbered over to her, swooped to kiss her cheek.

Then he took his drink into the study. He closed the connecting door to the living room in case Monica wanted to watch the Johnny Carson show.

He sat at his desk, put on his heavy black-rimmed glasses, and slowly read through Dr. Diane's two-page report. Then he read it again.

There was more there than she had given them in her oral summary. The six paragraphs described very disturbed people who showed every evidence of being out of control. Any one of them seemed to have the potential for ungovernable violence Delaney sat back and gently tinked the rim of his highball glass against his teeth. He thought about Simon Ellerbee.

What was it like, he wondered, to spend your life working with people whose thought processes were so chaotic? it was, he supposed, like being in a foreign country where all the natives were hostile, spoke a strange language, and even the geography of their world was terra incognita.

He imagined that any man who deliberately ventured into the alien land might suffer from bewilderment and disorientation. He'd have to clamp a tight hold on his own feelings to keep from being swept away by disorder.

Delaney remembered that cold, disciplined office of Dr. Simon Ellerbee.

Now he could understand why a psychiatrist would want to work in rigidly geometric surroundings where parallel lines never met and hard edges reminded that arrangement and sequence did exist, and logic was not dead.

Isaac Kane had been going to the clinic every Wednesday. He was given endless tests. Sometimes, with the permission of his mother, he was handed pills or liquids to swallow. They made him do things with wooden blocks and photographed him on videotape. Then he would spend an hour with Dr. Simon.

Kane didn't mind talking to the doctor. He was a nice, quiet man and really seemed interested in what Isaac had to say. In fact, Dr. Simon was about the only one who listened to Isaac; his mother wouldn't listen, and other people made fun of the way he talked. There was so much Kane wanted to say, and sometimes he couldn't get it out fast enough. Then he went, "Bub-bub-bub," and people laughed.

But Dr. Simon stopped coming to the clinic, so Kane stopped, too. They tried to get him to continue coming in every Wednesday, but he just wouldn't do it. They kept at him, and finally he had to hit some of them. That did the trick, all right, and they didn't bother him anymore.

So now he could spend all his days at the Harriet J. Raskob Community Center on West 79th Street. The clinic had been painted all white-Isaac didn't like that-but the Center was pink and green and blue and yellow.

It was warm in there, and they let him work on his pastel landscapes.

The head of the Center, Mrs. Freylinghausen, sold some of Kane's landscapes and gave the money to his mother. But she kept enough to buy him a wonderful box of at least a hundred pastel crayons in all colors and hues, an easel, paper, and panels. When he ran out of supplies, Mrs.

Freylinghausen bought him more-Isaac wasn't very good at shopping-and locked up all his property when the Center closed at 9:00 P.m.

Most of the people who came to the Center were very old, some in wheelchairs or on walkers. They were as nice to Isaac Kane as Mrs.

Freylinghausen. But there were younger people, too, and some of them weren't so nice. They mimicked Isaac's "Bub-bub-bub" and they tripped him or pushed his elbow when he was working or tried to steal his chalks. One girl liked to touch him all over.

Sometimes they got him so mad that he had to hit them. He was strong, and he could really hurt someone if he wanted to.

One afternoon-Kane didn't know what day it was-Mrs. Freylinghausen came out of her office with two men and headed for the corner where Isaac had set up his easel under a skylight. Both the men were big. The older wore a black overcoat and the other a dark green parka. Both carried their hats.

"Isaac," Mrs. Freylinghausen said, "I'd like you to meet two friends of mine who are interested in your work. This gentleman is Mr. Delaney, and here is Mr. Boone."

Isaac shook hands with both of them, leaving their palms smeared with colored chalk. They both smiled and looked nice. Mrs. Freylinghausen moved away.

"Mr. Kane," Delaney said, "we just saw some of your landscapes, and we think they're beautiful."

"They're okay, I guess," Isaac said modestly. "Sometimes they're not, you know, what I want. I can't always get the colors just right."

"Have you ever seen Turner's paintings?" Delaney asked.

"Turner? No. Who is he?"

"An English painter. He worked in oil and watercolor. He did a lot of landscapes. The way you handle light reminds me of Turner."

"Light!" Isaac Kane cried. "That's very hard to do." And then, because he wanted to say so much about light, he began to go "Bub-bub-bub…"

They waited patiently, not laughing at him, and when he got out what he wanted to say, they nodded understandingly.

"Mr. Kane," Boone said, "I think we may have a mutual friend. Did you know Doctor Ellerbee?"

"No, I don't know him."

"Doctor Simon Ellerbee?"

"Oh, Doctor Simon! Sure, I know him. He stopped coming to the clinic.

What happened to him?"

Boone glanced at Delaney.

"I'm afraid I have bad news for you, Mr. Kane," Delaney said. "Doctor Simon is dead. Someone killed him."

"Gee, that's too bad," Isaac said. "He was a nice man. I liked to talk to him."

He turned back to his easel, where a sheet of grainy paper had been pinned to a square of cardboard. He was working on an idyllic farm scene with a windmill, thatched cottage, a running brook. There were plump white clouds in the foreground and, beyond, dark menacing rain clouds.